Final Year Project 2017/2018

FYP Title: 

ENHANCEMENT ON SELF-STARTING DARRIEUS BLADED WIND TURBINE USING J-SHAPE AIRFOIL

Abstract:

Conventional Darrieus wind turbines face a challenge to self start in low wind speeds but their performance during operation is better than that of Savonius wind turbines which means that there is room for improvement for Darrieus wind turbine. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to design, fabricate and analyze a modified Darrieus wind turbine by means of adapting the blade geometry into a J-shaped blade. The J-shaped blade has a higher overall performance compared to the others because unlike the conventional Darrieus wind turbines which depends mostly on lift forces, this modification to the blades in cooperate drag forces and will produce a much better starting torque which solves the problem of self starting in conventional Darrieus wind turbines. From the findings, it has been found that the J-shaped airfoil is able to self start in a less than 2 seconds depending on wind speed and profile of the blade. It was also found that, the power coefficient and torque coefficient was verily depending on the wind speed and airfoil profile.

Wind turbine Testing: 

The testing is done in P19A Illumination Lab where the wind is sourced from an industrial fan.